Colorado gun owners face a rolling regulatory siege in 2026. Three new laws take effect at different points through the year, each written to survive legal challenges while making firearms ownership bureaucratically expensive enough that many will simply quit trying.
Gun show organizers hit the first deadline. House Bill 25-1238 takes effect January 1 requiring security plans submitted to law enforcement 14 days before each show, $1 million liability insurance, video surveillance of parking areas kept six months, and verification that every customer leaving with a firearm completed Colorado’s three-day waiting period. Violations bring class 2 misdemeanor charges, class 1 for repeats, plus five-year bans from organizing shows. The bill also requires all gun show vendors to hold both federal firearms licenses and Colorado state dealer permits. Private individuals selling through licensed dealers are exempt, but anyone else participating as a vendor without dual licenses commits class 2 misdemeanors.
Representatives Junie Joseph and Sean Camacho, both Democrats, sponsored the measure. It passed House committee 8-3, final passage on party lines. Not one Republican voted for it.
Ammunition buyers face the second deadline. House Bill 25-1133 takes effect July 1 raising the minimum purchase age to 21 and requiring all ammunition be stored behind counters or in locked displays accessible only with employee assistance. No more browsing shelves. The law defines ammunition broadly: cartridge cases, primers, bullets, propellant powder. Retailers need complete inventory overhaul, additional staff, secured storage space for products currently on open racks. The ammunition vending machines installed in three Colorado towns last year become illegal.
Representatives Monica Duran and Lindsay Gilchrist sponsored the bill. House passed 38-27, Senate on party lines. Zero Republican support.
Online ammunition creates enforcement problems the bill acknowledges without solving. Retailers must notify shipping carriers that packages contain ammunition while complying with federal packaging codes. Delivery personnel must verify recipients are 21 or older and obtain written acknowledgment. If no one’s home, package goes back. The law makes violations class 1 misdemeanors but includes this language: “The age verification and written notification requirements do not apply to a retail ammunition deliverer who does not know that the package contains ammunition because the sender failed to notify the deliverer.”
So delivery person liability attaches only if they know the package contains ammunition. But retailers must notify carriers, creating paper trails and criminal penalties. The practical result: Out-of-state ammunition vendors will stop shipping to Colorado entirely rather than navigate liability and verification requirements. California’s ammunition laws produced the same outcome. Colorado legislators knew this when they wrote the bill.
The exceptions are designed to survive legal challenges while restricting access. Anyone born before January 28, 2007 can still buy ammunition, grandfathering current 18-20 year olds into a permanent two-tier system. Active military and veterans are exempt. Anyone with a hunter education certificate can buy ammunition. People protected by protection orders can purchase. Shooting ranges can sell to 18-20 year olds for on-site use only.
Semiautomatic firearms face the final deadline. Senate Bill 25-003 takes effect August 1 prohibiting manufacture, sale, or purchase of most semiautomatic rifles, shotguns, and certain handguns with detachable magazines. AR-15s and AK-47s top the list. Current owners can keep affected firearms, but future transfers face restrictions.
Purchasing affected firearms after August 1 requires completing a Firearms Safety Course Eligibility Card process through county sheriffs. Applicants undergo name-based background checks, pay processing fees sheriffs set themselves, and pay Firearms Training and Safety Course Record fees established by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Sheriffs must issue cards unless applicants can’t lawfully possess firearms or the sheriff cannot positively identify them.
Sheriffs may also deny cards if they have “reasonable belief that documented previous behavior by the applicant makes it likely the applicant will present a danger to themself or others.” What constitutes reasonable belief and what documentation satisfies that standard remains undefined. Denials and revocations are subject to judicial review, creating a court backlog nobody has budgeted for.
Card holders must complete either an extended firearms safety course up to 12 hours including live fire, or a hunter education course plus a basic firearms safety course completed within five years before purchase. Colorado Parks and Wildlife maintains a database tracking all card holders and course completions.
Violations are class 2 misdemeanors for first offenses, class 6 felonies for subsequent offenses. The Department of Revenue revokes state firearms dealer permits for violations. Anyone convicted of misdemeanor violations within five years cannot pass background checks for firearm transfers. Felony convictions prohibit firearm possession entirely.
Senators Tom Sullivan and Julie Gonzales sponsored the measure with Representatives Andrew Boesenecker and Meg Froelich. All Democrats. Final Senate vote 19-15, House 36-28. Zero Republican votes in either chamber.
Sullivan, whose son was killed in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting, expects legal challenges. “They haven’t been successful with their lawsuits in the past and I’m confident that the legislation we passed will stand up to their complaints in a court of law,” he said. The Colorado State Shooting Association filed federal lawsuit September 2 claiming the permit-to-purchase system violates the Second Amendment. Mountain States Legal Foundation is representing them. The case remains pending.
Colorado’s track record supports Sullivan’s confidence. Chief U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer upheld the state’s age 21 firearm purchase requirement in June 2025, ruling it falls within “presumptively lawful” regulations under 10th Circuit precedent. The 15-round magazine limit survived Colorado Supreme Court challenge in 2020. The three-day waiting period was upheld in federal court.
But a circuit split exists. While the 10th Circuit upholds Colorado’s restrictions, the 5th and 3rd Circuits struck down similar state laws, potentially forcing Supreme Court intervention. Colorado Republicans, county sheriffs, and the Colorado State Shooting Association sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi in April requesting Second Amendment Enforcement Task Force review of “nearly 20 state gun laws.” No action has been taken.
By August 2026, Colorado gun owners navigate three distinct regulatory regimes depending on what they’re buying, where they’re buying it, and when they were born. Gun shows require liability insurance and video surveillance. Ammunition sits behind counters accessible only with employee assistance, unless you have a hunter education certificate or were born before a specific date in 2007. Semiautomatic firearms require eligibility cards from sheriffs who can deny them based on undefined “reasonable belief” about “documented previous behavior.”
Each law was written to survive constitutional challenge using the Supreme Court’s Bruen test requiring historical analogies from the Founding Era or Reconstruction. Each passed without a single Republican vote. Each compounds the others: Can’t buy ammunition at gun shows without employee assistance. Can’t buy semiautomatic firearms without training cards. Can’t have online ammunition delivered unless recipient proves age and signs acknowledgment.
The question isn’t whether these laws restrict Second Amendment rights. That’s the point. The question is whether making constitutional rights bureaucratically expensive and practically difficult to exercise counts as infringement when the restrictions technically leave purchase pathways available. Colorado Democrats controlling both legislative chambers and the governor’s office answered that question three times in 2025. The federal courts will spend years determining whether they were right.
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